5 ms·

How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the de

by haspok 7y ago

How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the desktop move around completely randomly. It is better than before, because they used to move outside the visible area, they fixed at least that. But hey, at least there is an Emoji Selector now (???).

jonny383 7y ago
Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).
- ognarb 7y ago
  Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Yep, just need to give it another decade or so I suppose.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      The future is already there, just not evenly distributed ;)
    - cies 7y ago
      My guess: 1 year more for Gnome, 3 more years for KDE. That assumes non-Nvidia hardware. If you have one of those you are on a potentially very different timeline, that I do not dare to predict.
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    Duke nukem forever!
- opencl 7y ago
  System76 added a 'HiDPI daemon' for handling mixed-DPI multimonitor setups in GNOME to their PopOS distro, in my experience it works less badly than the alternatives. https://blog.system76.com/post/168340008923/hidpi-is-released-work-on-initial-setup https://blog.system76.com/post/168340008923/hidpi-is-release...
  - nonbirithm 7y ago
    It's open source also, so you could theoretically use it in a different distro. https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon
- shrikant 7y ago
  > [...] multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). Testify :( I'm still struggling to get my (IMHO, extremely vanilla) setup working (Ubuntu on Thinkpad T430 + 2 external QHD monitors), and I'd appreciate any pointers to any resources that can help me resolve this.
  - toupeira 7y ago
    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI has lots of information. I have a Thinkpad X1C and an external monitor, both with QHD resolution. What I ended up with is using xrandr scaling to increase the resolution of the external monitor (probably should have gotten a 4K instead...), and tweaking font sizes and Firefox's UI scaling until it looks okay on both screens. For QT apps I also had to set QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0. Some proprietary apps are still too small though, so I tend not to use them ;-) The xrandr scaling is applied through a script and not persistent, so I mapped it to a keyboard shortcut I can press when I reconnect the monitor. My script looks like this: xrandr \ --output eDP-1 --pos 0x0 --scale 0.9999x0.9999 \ --output DP-2 --pos 2560x0 --scale 1.25x1.25 The silly 0.9999x0.9999 scaling on the first screen is to work around a mouse flickering bug in the modesetting driver: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70
    - shrikant 7y ago
      This looks useful -- thanks! Will try out some of the suggestions mentioned here.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Is that about weird multistream displayport connections? Two times QHD is definitely not vanilla and was unsupported on windows until a while ago as well.
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  >Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). Works fine for me on i3 (X11).
nwah1 7y ago
This is my main problem. Would also like to see rootless X support in SDDM. If those two issues were fixed, I would switch back to KDE. Bug was opened 6 years ago, and is still open. GDM handles this by default. https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/246 https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/246
nobleach 7y ago
Even on my FHD laptop and ultra-wide (yet not HiDPI) monitor, windows NEVER stay put. Every time I let the display go to sleep (like heading out to lunch) I come back to find all windows have moved to my large monitor and are full-screened. So I have to move them all back around.
pjmlp 7y ago
I have long come to accept that unless one is at an Hollywood powerhouse, anything graphics related is better done on Windows/macOS.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Stupid question: What is the point of mixed dpi? If you have a large UHD monitor, why would you still use the small lowres screen? Conversely, if you are willing to use a large lowres screen, why not simply set the other screen to half resolution to get the same dpi?

by haspok 7y ago

jonny383 7y ago

Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).

ognarb 7y ago
Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Yep, just need to give it another decade or so I suppose.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    The future is already there, just not evenly distributed ;)
  - cies 7y ago
    My guess: 1 year more for Gnome, 3 more years for KDE. That assumes non-Nvidia hardware. If you have one of those you are on a potentially very different timeline, that I do not dare to predict.
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  Duke nukem forever!
opencl 7y ago
System76 added a 'HiDPI daemon' for handling mixed-DPI multimonitor setups in GNOME to their PopOS distro, in my experience it works less badly than the alternatives. https://blog.system76.com/post/168340008923/hidpi-is-released-work-on-initial-setup https://blog.system76.com/post/168340008923/hidpi-is-release...
- nonbirithm 7y ago
  It's open source also, so you could theoretically use it in a different distro. https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon
shrikant 7y ago
> [...] multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). Testify :( I'm still struggling to get my (IMHO, extremely vanilla) setup working (Ubuntu on Thinkpad T430 + 2 external QHD monitors), and I'd appreciate any pointers to any resources that can help me resolve this.
- toupeira 7y ago
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI has lots of information. I have a Thinkpad X1C and an external monitor, both with QHD resolution. What I ended up with is using xrandr scaling to increase the resolution of the external monitor (probably should have gotten a 4K instead...), and tweaking font sizes and Firefox's UI scaling until it looks okay on both screens. For QT apps I also had to set QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0. Some proprietary apps are still too small though, so I tend not to use them ;-) The xrandr scaling is applied through a script and not persistent, so I mapped it to a keyboard shortcut I can press when I reconnect the monitor. My script looks like this: xrandr \ --output eDP-1 --pos 0x0 --scale 0.9999x0.9999 \ --output DP-2 --pos 2560x0 --scale 1.25x1.25 The silly 0.9999x0.9999 scaling on the first screen is to work around a mouse flickering bug in the modesetting driver: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70
  - shrikant 7y ago
    This looks useful -- thanks! Will try out some of the suggestions mentioned here.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Is that about weird multistream displayport connections? Two times QHD is definitely not vanilla and was unsupported on windows until a while ago as well.
NullPrefix 7y ago
>Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). Works fine for me on i3 (X11).

nwah1 7y ago

This is my main problem. Would also like to see rootless X support in SDDM. If those two issues were fixed, I would switch back to KDE. Bug was opened 6 years ago, and is still open. GDM handles this by default. https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/246 https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/246

nobleach 7y ago

Even on my FHD laptop and ultra-wide (yet not HiDPI) monitor, windows NEVER stay put. Every time I let the display go to sleep (like heading out to lunch) I come back to find all windows have moved to my large monitor and are full-screened. So I have to move them all back around.

pjmlp 7y ago

I have long come to accept that unless one is at an Hollywood powerhouse, anything graphics related is better done on Windows/macOS.

diffeomorphism 7y ago

Stupid question: What is the point of mixed dpi? If you have a large UHD monitor, why would you still use the small lowres screen? Conversely, if you are willing to use a large lowres screen, why not simply set the other screen to half resolution to get the same dpi?